Consumers reject ‘plastic’ home improvement products
A new poll reveals almost half of UK homeowners would not purchase home improvement products containing plastics because of concerns about the impact plastic pollution is having on the planet.
The findings of the independent survey conducted by leading pollster, YouGov, found that 44% of total respondents flatly rejected the prospect of buying home improvements manufactured in ‘plastic’.
A further 27% were unsure and 29% said it would not dissuade them from buying them.
At the same time, of those surveyed, 69% said that windows in their homes were currently manufactured from PVC-U.
This compared to 23% for wood, 7% aluminium, 2% other, while 14% of respondents were unsure of material used in the manufacture of the windows installed in their properties.
When asked if they knew what the abbreviation ‘PVC’ stood for, 54% admitted that that they had no idea.
“The results highlight a challenge for the PVC-U window and door industry,” said Rob McGlennon, managing director, Deceuninck.
“As a starting point it’s clear that for a lot of UK homeowners, plastic-building products are being tarred with the same broad brush as bottles, bags and other single use plastics.
“The increased awareness about the impact single use plastics are having, is great. For our industry, the fact that this survey reveals that consumers aren’t drawing a line between them and low maintenance, long-life and fully recyclable plastic building products, is a warning of things to come – unless we act now and start to communicate effectively with the homeowner.”
PVC-U is a highly recyclable building material with a Building Research Establishment Green Guide to Specification A and A+ rating for domestic and commercial application.
This is founded on a recognised Reference Service Life of at least 35-years and that PVC-U can be recycled up to 10 times without impacting on performance.
Deceuninck has invested more the €15million in support of PVC-U recycling in one of the world’s most advanced recycling and compounding facilities.
This gives it the capability to reprocess up to 45,000 tonnes of post-consumer and post-manufacturing PVC-U per year – the equivalent of preventing 3 million windows from going to landfill annually.
Use of recycled material also delivering a reduction in CO2 emissions of 90,000 tonnes compared to virgin feedstocks as well as a 90% energy saving.
Rob continued: “We’re not alone, a number of other systems companies have also invested. That however, amounts to nothing, if we don’t communicate what we’re doing to the end-user.”
The Deceuninck commissioned study also found that 63% of UK homeowners surveyed said that they would be more likely to purchase home improvements, which they saw as being more ‘sustainable’ while 38% of said that they would be prepared to pay more for them.
“As we’ve highlighted, the survey isn’t all stick – there’s a lot of carrot too. People will choose products which they see as more sustainable over those that they don’t, and are prepared to pay more for them,” continued Rob.
“It is, however, another wake up call for the PVC-U window and door industry and anyone who works within its supply chain.”